Not clueless about cruciverbalism

Sunday

Dec 16, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Sid McKeen Wry & Ginger

My daughter Lisa in Vermont, who apparently inherited some of my word-maven genes, subscribes to the Word of the Day on Dictionary.com. She occasionally passes one along to me by email, as she did last Tuesday.

This one caught my attention particularly because she wrote, “Dad: A word describing you!!” I half expected the word to be curmudgeon, geezer, skinflint or something of the ilk, but no, it was — get this — cruciverbalist.

I quickly learned the word combines “cross” and “word,” thus describing a crossword fan, which I happen to be. My name, as they say at AA, is Sid, and I’m not an alcoholic, but a cruciverbalist. Both are addictions, but alcholics at least get to go to meetings, while cruciverbalists tend to stay home and suffer in silence.

My wife recently became a convert to cruciverbalism as well. Many a morning, we find ourselves plugging away at our respective grids in utter and eerie stillness, punctuated only by an occasional telephone call that neither of us wants to leave our puzzle long enough to answer. If not the ringing of the phone, the silence may be broken by one of us asking the other something like this: “What the Caspian Sea is in 11 letters, beginning with L, what do you suppose that is?”

“Hey, quiet, I’m still at sea over the Caspian. Hold it, it looks like maybe it’s “largest lake.” Yes, I guess that’s it.”

We finally figured out that the other one was “language lab.” Both of them raise a small irritation for longtime cruciverbalists like me. That is, that so many answers are not just one word, as used to be the norm. They’re often a whole phrase. That’s why I thought “large body of water” might have been right for the Caspian Sea. Maybe I’m just sore because I didn’t know it was a lake, let alone the biggest one.

For some time now, I’ve been spending a large chunk of my weekends struggling with The New York Times Sunday Puzzle, which I call the Sunday, Monday and Sometimes Tuesday Crossword. The concocters of these exercises must have a sadistic streak. The puns are so far-fetched they sometimes bring tears to my eyes even when I manage to solve them.

I’m a purist when it comes to word puzzles. I believe it to be a cardinal sin to make use of a crossword dictionary. I would rather hold the thing for a week than consult Webster. (I’ve been known to peek at an atlas, which is also a reference book, but somehow that strikes me as a misdemeanor, not a Class A felony.)

I wish we could submit our crosswords to some authority when they’re done. The way it works now, the completed puzzles just get thrown into the recycle bin with the rest of the junk. They may be good for our brains, but they don’t do much for our self-estimation.

You may not have learned much here, but at least you know a 14-letter word for sadomasochism. It’s cruciverbalism.